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Lance Armstrong -- Hero, Doping Cheater and Tragic Figure

Lance Armstrong rides in a breakaway in the first kilometers of the Col du Tourmalet pass during the 16th stage of the 2010 Tour de France. (Image credit: AFP via @daylife)

In Silicon Valley where I live, biking is the new golf. On any weekend, the roads around Palo Alto and the surrounding Santa Cruz Mountains are thick with cyclists of all ages and levels. But this being Silicon Valley – which is to say super rich and competitive – a high percentage of cyclists ride hard-core, Tour-caliber $9,000 Trek Madones or similarly priced steeds from Specialized, Bianchi, Cervelo, Colnago, Cannondale and the like.

We all want to be like Lance.

Lance Armstrong stands on the highest podium of heroes who inspire middle-age men and women to get off their duffs and sweat. Facing a 19 mile, 4,000 foot climb up Mt. Hamilton near San Jose, as I did on Memorial Day, plodders like me will think of Lance. An image of Lance in full grimace will come into our heads. Because Lance suffered to become the greatest Tour de France rider in history, and suffered before that to defeat a cancer that had gone into his brain and lungs, and suffered still more as a youth in a single-mom home, well, maybe we can suffer some, too.

Lance made suffering cool. Lance is like a secular Jesus. His suffering and ultimate triumph gives hope.

This hope is why most weekend cyclists, along with most cancer patients and survivors throughout the world, DO NOT WANT TO HEAR about the possibility of Lance and steroids, Lance and human growth hormones, Lance and EPO, Lance and blood transfusions. We do not want to hear that Lance Armstrong cheated to win. Millions of us have too much invested in Lance Armstrong to learn otherwise.

Is any of this true? Did Lance really dope? Did he use performance-enhancing drugs and blood transfusions during his seven Tour wins from 1999 to 2005, his third-place finish in 2009, and his crashed-marred finale in 2010?

I didn’t want to believe it myself. But as I wrote two years ago on Forbes.com, the 2010 Tour de France produced data that convinced me otherwise.

Mountain-climb times produced by the top climbers in the 2010 Tour de France were oddly but consistently 5% worse than the numbers generated by the Tour’s top climbers from 1996 to 2006, according to the authoritative Science of Sport website. You can read all about the numbers, analytics and methodology on the Science of Sport website.

Now, why would the climbing performance numbers get worse even as bicycles have become faster and knowledge about training, nutrition and recovery has advanced? The most plausible answer is that the anti-doping testing standards have become much better. In 2008 professional cycling’s governing body implemented the final pieces of the so-called biological passport. It works like this and is effective because it alerts anti-doping officials to any anomalies in an athlete’s normal blood chemistry.

All of the Tour’s winners from 1996 to 2006, with one famous exception, were later caught, or admitted to, using performance drugs. The exception was Lance Armstrong, who was never caught despite being the most tested athlete in modern sports. That’s the story, anyway. Actually Lance was caught, twice: One in 1999 for steroids and again in 1999 for the red cell boosting drug, EPO.

In the 1999 steroid case, Lance’s doctors produced a legal corticosteroid prescription for saddle sores. The prescription may or may not have been backdated. Prize-winning author David Walsh asserts it was backdated. Lance’s 1999 EPO positive was found in a frozen urine sample stored for a future (and better) detection technology, which appeared in 2005. The “A” sample showed evidence of EPO. The confirming “B” sample was compromised through mishandling and could not be used as evidence. Read the account here and here.

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Whether Armstrong doped or not, it has never been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. I agree with the comment that Mr. Armstrong may be less than an easy guy to like, but putting aside the inspirational story and the good he has done, at what point will various authorities lay down and accept that everyone…EVERYONE!…is better served to accept the past and get on with the future. How many discredited, sad characters can they dredge up to say they shared a needle with Lance. How many half samples or somewhat suspicious doctors or coincidental associations will writers dredge up to pad articles to make them newsworthy? And how many public dollars will agencies spend before they deal with today’s issues and not who won six years ago. The sad case of Andy Schleck getting a used yellow jersey and a trophy with Contadore’s lipstick all over it speaks to me of the senselessness of focusing on past cheating. Let it go and lets get on with finding the cheaters before the event ends and let Mr. Armstrong dedicate his life to the better good. Spend the money they are using on paying down the national debt or securing better testing. BTW: I see Lance must be doping again…he’s winning triathlons.

Lance Armstrong is not secular Jesus. Armstrong is a man. In the United States men are innocent until proven guilty. Until proven guilty Armstrong is a great champion. If proven guilty in a court of law in the United States where Armstrong is granted the rights of self defense of an American citizen, then and only then will Armstrong be a doping cheater.

I find three aspects of the author’s key points to be utterly ridiculous.

1) “Mountain-climb times produced by the top climbers in the 2010 Tour de France were oddly but consistently 5% worse than the numbers generated by the Tour’s top climbers from 1996 to 2006” Hmmm, could it be that the Tour de France CHANGES ITS COURSE EVERY YEAR? What about the temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind, cloud cover, etc, etc, etc in 2010? How about, the riders were less talented? Could crashes have played a role? This is also a race where you do not race for stage records (remember, the stages are not the same from year to year) but for stage WINS – if the field decides to pace itself on the mountains, the leaders can relax too. This point by the author is fundamentally stupid.

2) “That advantage (EPO doping), according to our friends at Science of Sport, is about 5% faster on mountain climbs at the professional cycling level.” PROBLEM 1 – exactly where do you find scientifically reliable data that accurately measures the advantage of illegal doping in elite athletes????? Did your friends at Science of Sport secretly get elite cyclists to run several versions of the Tour in succession, alternately doing so without and with doping? In other words, 5% is a guess and the author’s lengthy comments on how rare it is for an elite athlete to hold a 5% edge over his/her peers is more effective as a commentary on how unrealistic that guess is.

3) “That advantage (EPO doping), according to our friends at Science of Sport, is about 5% faster on mountain climbs at the professional cycling level.” PROBLEM 2 – if the 5% guess were (by some miracle) accurate, the fact that the comparisons provided by the author are known to have doped makes his conclusion highly dubious. If the competitors chosen are known to have doped then we cannot assume that their base athletic ability is equal to Armstrong’s. In other words, as we know that they artificially enhanced their capacity and we do not know that Armstrong did, then the most logical assumption would be that his competitors were 5% less gifted than Armstrong. In short, as we do not have any idea how “a dirty Pantani or Ullrich” would have performed in the absence of doping, it is not up to Armstrong or the rest of the world to prove that “Lance had a 5% physical advantage over the next best riders” – it is up to you and/or Pantini and Ullrich to prove they were not 5% inferior without doping.

Yes, but how does such an argument explain, say, an Aryton Senna? Was he (by implication) on drugs too? He had some eight full seasons in Formula 1, and no one could him touch in ability, particularly demonstrated when cars were made even running in the rain. See the opening lap of Donnington 1993. Tell me that is not genius. Indeed, in watching that opening lap you have to remind yourself that Senna was racing not against a bunch of saps, but against the very best drivers and teams in the world. 5% nothing. If forced to put a number on it, he was maybe 30% better than his rivals and consistently so throughout his career.

would be nice if you could link directly to the Science of Sports post you refer to, as opposed to their home page – I remember seeing this information when it was posted, but was unable to find it just now…

I am an avid and at times over the years a competitive amateur cyclist who followed Armstrong’s career with appreciation and admiration. I am also a cancer survivor who is grateful for his cancer work. I also have read enough about him to conclude that he is not a nice person. Regarding his doping, I reached an obvious conclusion years ago. Of course he was doping. Every other rider in the Tour was doping. Virtually every rider who shared the podium has since been caught doping. If there was one rider out there so wholesome that I thought he might be the only clean rider in the field it was Tyler Hamilton, who got busted. From the 90s until at least the last couple years, you had two choices: dope or pick another sport. Armstrong was the best rider in the world. He was a genetic freak, he trained harder, assembled a better team, was tougher and rode smarter. If everyone was clean he would have won. When everyone cheated, including him, he did win. What is the point of going after him now? Spite? What is to be gained except harming his cancer work and legacy?